Thursday, September 20

Today, sfgirlbybay reader Monique shared her new blog with me, Day At A Glance. It's a daily photo journal, tracking the progress of the remodeling of her family's new San Francisco apartment. As I told Monique, it looks like really hard, dirty work, and I am completely envious. I relish the day I am covered head to toe in spackle and paint with a hammer in my hand and nails in my teeth, only not on behalf of my landlord. Congratulations Monique! If you'd like to track their progress, you can be construction voyeur like me here. I think it'll be fun to check back in a month or so and look in on the apartment makeover. Be proud, guys - it looks great so far.

I love these pictures and can relate...my family inherited an Edwardian flat from my Grandmother who was 95 when she passed away. We, actually my Dad who is a retired plumber, have been renovating it ourselves for 5 months now - it needed A LOT of work. My siblings and I are well into our 30's and have never done this type of manual work before. With our Dad's leadership, we have learned how to break down walls, pop tiles, scrape floors, studied electrical, paint - you name it, we have had our hands on it. We discovered that these Edwardian homes were built to last! So far, we have not come across anything funky about the construction. Thanks to our Grandmother's generosity - our family is working closely together (except for picking paint colors!), and it has been a long time since we've done that! It is HARD work and I have a new respect for construction workers and designers.